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Category talk:War Criminals
How about Hipolito Rodriguez? For that matter, Chester Martin shot or had his men shoot surrendered Confederates when there wasn't the time to take them back behind the lines. Likewise Armstrong Grimes. ML4E 20:29, June 20, 2010 (UTC) :Did Grimes do that? I don't remember but I can believe it. It seemed appallingly common. :Stephen Ramsay shot men who'd asked for quarter, the ones in the armored car. And . . . someone else, also in AF. I remember Mak noting how within the space of just one book he'd gone from genuine outrage to the sort of mild annoyance at dirty playing you'd feel if you watched a NFL coach ice the other team's kicker. I think it was meant to show how grim were the realities of the Great War. :I'm game for putting them in, though I would be a bit concerned that doing so might neuter the category somewhat. As it now stands, it's a real Rogues' Gallery. If we fill it up with people like Martin and Ramsay--ordinary schlubs who were, if not unsympathetic, not impossible to like either, but who broke some rules out of necessity--we might soften its impact somewhat. On the other hand, they did commit war crimes, and this is the sort of argument used to explain away some really terrible things all through history. Turtle Fan 20:58, June 20, 2010 (UTC) ::I think a category overhaul is probably in order. I'd submit this idea: we do the ATL/OTL split, and retitle these new categoris specifically as "Convicted War Criminals". For one, I'm a little uncomfortable with having fictional characters lumped in with real historical monster at this stage. For another, the "Convicted" part will help resolve the debate concerning whether or not giving no quarter on the battlefield is quite the same as industrial murder. TR 02:00, June 23, 2010 (UTC) :::Re ATL/OTL: There are war criminals in the fantasy stories too. I'm wondering whether we should start calling them Historical/Fictional, with notes explaining that fictional refers to events that did not happen, not that it's limited to fictional characters. :::Re Convicted: War crimes convictions are often pathetically easy to evade. There's the fact that soldiers of the winning side are seldom if ever brought to justice. Even a loser can get away with it. Take Kimball. There is absolutely no doubt that he fired on the Ericson after the war was over, absolutely no doubt he knew the war was over and that the Ericson was no longer a legitimate target (unlike Fritz-Julius Lemp, who had misidentified the Athenia) and absolutely no doubt that this was criminal. Everyone knew it. This isn't shooting men who have surrendered because you can't spare anyone to guard them and don't want them lurking around behind the lines; Kimball's actions showed malice aforethought and I would argue it earns him a spot in the War Criminals category alongside the Nazis et cetera. Yet he evaded conviction and instead succumbed to vigilante justice. I changed the description with him specifically in mind (but I didn't add him--HE was already here, which gave me the idea in the first place). There are other cases like that (Lavochkin or however he spelled it is another) and I hate to see them get away with it because the legal and political systems offered them an escape hatch. Turtle Fan 02:25, June 23, 2010 (UTC) Follow up Based on Talk:Joseph Stieglitz, bringing this conversation back up. At a minimum, I think we should focus on those who were convicted, even if we don't do the OTL/ATL split. TR (talk) 15:57, November 4, 2019 (UTC) :Yeah, I agree. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:54, November 4, 2019 (UTC) :I want to think about this. As I said nine(!!!) years ago, I don't care to have the small stuff mixed in with the totally horrific but, as Turtle Fan said, conviction would be hard to get in some cases. Also some, like Hip, died without coming to trial. ML4E (talk) 23:38, November 4, 2019 (UTC)